* Now available in the mainline Linux kernel. It uses the 'perf' infrastructure. Hence, you need a recent enough kernel (2.6.32 or later).

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* See [http://lxr.free-electrons.com/source/tools/perf/builtin-timechart.c tools/perf/builtin-timechart.c] and [http://lxr.free-electrons.com/source/tools/perf/Documentation/perf-timechart.txt tools/perf/Documentation/perf-timechart.txt] in the kernel sources for details.

* [http://tree.celinuxforum.org/CelfPubWiki/ELC2006Presentations?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=VisualizingResUsageDuringBoot.pdf Visualizing Resource Usage During Boot] Presentation on 'embootchart' by Matthew Klahn and Moosa Muhammad of Motorola about bootchart deficiencies in the embedded space, and a program (unfortunately never published) to fix them.

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* [[Media:VisualizingResUsageDuringBoot.pdf|Visualizing Resource Usage During Boot]] - Presentation on 'embootchart' by Matthew Klahn and Moosa Muhammad of Motorola about bootchart deficiencies in the embedded space, and a program (unfortunately never published) to fix them.

This makes it possible to start bootchartd even before init by booting kernel with:<br />

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Note also that bootchartd tries to create a gzipped tarball, so you either need a full tar with gz support, or you need to enable FEATURE_SEAMLESS_GZ in busybox. If 'tar -z' is not working, bootchartd will not produce output.

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init=/bin/bootchartd bootchart_init=/path/to/regular/init<br />

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==== To use ====

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To use this, capture the bootchart information using bootchartd, then transfer the information to your

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host machine, and use bootchart to produce a graphic chart of the boot sequence.

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The host 'bootchart' provided by Ubuntu-based hosts uses [http://code.google.com/p/pybootchartgui/ pybootchartgui] to generate a graph from the collected data. However, that version of pybootchartgui does not work well with the data generated by busybox bootchartd. A newer project [https://github.com/mmeeks/bootchart bootchart2] has improved pybootchartgui and included it in their sources, and this works fine with busybox bootchartd data.

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After downloading bootchart2 and running 'make', you can generate a graph (bootchart.png) with:

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/path/to/bootchart2/pybootchartgui.py bootlog.tgz

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An example graph, generated in a different way, is shown below:

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[[File:Bootchart.png]]

== Related projects ==

== Related projects ==

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Line 66:

A related project is a set of [[System Tap]] scripts to provide information about boot time.

A related project is a set of [[System Tap]] scripts to provide information about boot time.

See [http://people.redhat.com/berrange/systemtap/bootprobe/ Bootprobe]

See [http://people.redhat.com/berrange/systemtap/bootprobe/ Bootprobe]

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=== Updated Fork ===

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Bootchart has been forked and updated and can be found on github https://github.com/mmeeks/bootchart (Main changes: no java, better visualization)

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Another fork (the same?) can be found here: [http://foo-projects.org/~sofar/bootchart/ Updated Bootchart]

[[Category:Boot Time]]

[[Category:Boot Time]]

[[Category:Measuring]]

[[Category:Measuring]]

[[Category:Linux]]

[[Category:Linux]]

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[[Category:Bootchart]]

Latest revision as of 17:22, 27 October 2013

Bootchart is a tool for performance analysis and visualization of the Linux boot process. Resource utilization and process information are collected during the user-space portion of the boot process and are later rendered in a PNG, SVG or EPS encoded chart. For embedded systems several developers have tried to use bootchart to analyze boot time, but problems arose. There have been several efforts to modify bootchart to make it more useful for embedded development.

ubootchart

EmBootchart

Visualizing Resource Usage During Boot - Presentation on 'embootchart' by Matthew Klahn and Moosa Muhammad of Motorola about bootchart deficiencies in the embedded space, and a program (unfortunately never published) to fix them.

BusyBox

Busybox has a C implementation of bootchartd. It compiles to less than 40k (static uclibc i386 build). It will be available in the busybox-1.17.0 release. Please send bug reports, improvements to busybox mailing list.

Note also that bootchartd tries to create a gzipped tarball, so you either need a full tar with gz support, or you need to enable FEATURE_SEAMLESS_GZ in busybox. If 'tar -z' is not working, bootchartd will not produce output.

To use

To use this, capture the bootchart information using bootchartd, then transfer the information to your
host machine, and use bootchart to produce a graphic chart of the boot sequence.

The host 'bootchart' provided by Ubuntu-based hosts uses pybootchartgui to generate a graph from the collected data. However, that version of pybootchartgui does not work well with the data generated by busybox bootchartd. A newer project bootchart2 has improved pybootchartgui and included it in their sources, and this works fine with busybox bootchartd data.

After downloading bootchart2 and running 'make', you can generate a graph (bootchart.png) with:

/path/to/bootchart2/pybootchartgui.py bootlog.tgz

An example graph, generated in a different way, is shown below:

Related projects

SystemTap Scripts

A related project is a set of System Tap scripts to provide information about boot time.
See Bootprobe